Uber Eats Now Supports Apple Pay

Uber announced on Wednesday (April 17) that it is adding Apple Pay to its popular Uber Eats app, according to reports. Customers who want to use the payment option can now either do so using the Face ID or Touch ID option inside the Uber Eats app.

Apple Pay has previously been a payment option for the Uber ride-hailing app, but the addition to the food app is new. Uber also introduced Venmo as a payment option in 2018, after noticing that six million payments in the popular app were marked “Uber” in the previous year.

Uber noted Venmo was a popular service for friends who wanted to split the cost of a meal or a ride. Uber also accepts credit and debit cards, as well as PayPal.

Apple Pay is a direct competitor to both PayPal and Venmo. Many brands are drawn to the service because of the benefits of having a built-in payment choice, which leads to higher conversion rates.

Apple Pay already functions in numerous apps, including Staples, Etsy, Instacart, Lyft and many others. Postmates, Grubhub, Seamless, Starbucks and Panera, which are all Uber Eats competitors, also accept Apple Pay.

Uber Eats will roll out Apple Pay to almost 20 markets in the upcoming weeks. Those markets include the U.S., the U.K., Belgium, Canada, France, Hong Kong, Ireland, Italy, Japan, New Zealand, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Netherlands and the U.A.E.

When the company made the announcement, Uber highlighted Apple Pay’s security and privacy features, and stressed that actual card numbers aren’t stored on the device or in the company’s servers. A unique device account number is assigned and encrypted, which then gets stored in the secure element on the user’s device. Each transaction is then authorized with a unique code that is only used once.